ABSTRACT
As Melissa Yinger and Michael Ursell's review of 'Shakespeare's Books' and William P. Weaver's description of 'A Classical Education' suggest the lack of knowledge about Shakespeare's specific literary and pedagogic background means that conversations about his direct engagement with classical writings, in the vernacular or otherwise, often remain speculative. In many ways, Christian-humanist initiatives help to explain the period's desire to translate. In the absence of exact information, most scholars agree that Shakespeare's works attest to the kinds of classical knowledge gained in grammar school. The Metamorphoses appears onstage in the aforementioned Titus Andronicus when a copy of Ovid's poem appears in the hands of Young Lucius as he takes flight from his aunt Lavinia. From its celebrated opening word menin and the subsequent scrutiny of Achilles' rage, Homer's epic is an interrogation of that passion. The sixteenth century's translation of the classics is an insidious process which goes beyond the evidently textual.
